Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is at the end of the day the most compelling persuasive and winning argument against a death penalty.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

As men are not able to fight against death misery ignorance they have taken it into their heads in order to be happy not to think of them at all.

The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.

It is possible to provide security against other ills but as far as death is concerned we men live in a city without walls.

Everybody always wants to rebel against their parents' music but nobody listened to music louder than my dad.

My dad said 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world and he needed to know that he had a nice wife and kids and it wasn't the same any more.

I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.